The creator economy as a media channel: a CMO playbook

0:00Welcome to the Leaders Insights Podcast. Today's episode, the Creator Economy as a

0:10media channel, a CMO playbook. The Creator Economy just hit an estimated $250 billion

0:15this year, and your article calls it a media channel that rivals paid and owned. That's

0:20a bold claim. Defend it.

0:22It's not bold, it's overdue. Paid media, the ads you buy, is getting more expensive

0:28and less trusted every quarter. Owned media, your own channels, your website, your newsletter,

0:34has reached limits. Creators sit in the middle. They've got the trust of owned and the scale

0:40of paid, at a lower cost per view. That's why brands are shifting budget.

0:45Trust is the word everyone throws around. But audiences know these people are paid.

0:50Where's the trust?

0:51Disclosure doesn't kill trust. It protects it. The data holds up. Nielsen's been

0:57saying for years that recommendations from people you follow beat brand advertising,

1:02and that gap hasn't closed. A creator paid to talk about a running shoe still ran in

1:07it. The audience isn't stupid. They're buying the person's judgment, not pretending

1:12the check doesn't exist.

1:14Fine. So a CMO chief marketing officer reads your playbook. Step one. What actually is

1:20it?

1:21Stop treating creators as a one-off campaign line and treat them like a channel with

1:25a roster. You wouldn't buy one billboard and call it a media strategy. Build a portfolio.

1:31A handful of always-on creators you renew. Not 50 you rent once. Chipotle's done this

1:37well. They keep relationships going for years. So the audience associates the creator with

1:42the brand, not just one sponsored post.

1:46Portfolio sounds expensive. Most CMOs I know are cutting budgets in 2026, not building

1:52rosters.

1:53That's exactly why the roster wins. Renewing a mid-tier creator, someone with 100,000 to

1:59half a million followers, costs a fraction of a celebrity, and their engagement rate is

2:04usually higher. The mega-influencers get you reach and a bad cost per engagement. The

2:09mid-tier gets you an audience that actually replies. You spread budget across the middle,

2:15and you're buying efficiency, not vanity.

2:17Let's get uncomfortable. Measurement. Every CMO says creator ROI, return on investment,

2:23is a black box, is it?

2:25It was. When people measured likes. That's the mistake. Likes are a feeling, not a result.

2:32You measure creators the way you measure any channel, with a code, a link, or a holdout

2:37test where you show the content to one group and hide it from another and compare who buys.

2:43If you're not running incrementality, the extra sales you got that you wouldn't have

2:48otherwise, you're guessing. Holdout tests are hard on social. You can't

2:53cleanly wall off an audience. You can't get it lab clean, no. But you can

2:57geo split. Run creators in five cities, go dark in five comparable ones, watch the

3:03sales gap, or use post-purchase surveys, literally asking, where'd you hear about

3:08us? Messy, but directionally honest. The brands lying to themselves are the ones counting

3:14impressions and calling it revenue. What's the single biggest way these programs blow

3:19up? Over scripting, a CMO hands a creator a word-for-word

3:24brief. The creator reads it like a hostage video, and the audience smells it instantly.

3:30Engagement creators. Your job is the guardrails. What you can't say, the legal lines. And

3:36then you let them talk like themselves. Duolingo built an entire brand voice by letting the

3:42person running the account be genuinely unhinged. A committee would have killed it in week one.

3:49So how much control do you actually give up?

3:52Control the message, not the words. Give them three points you need landed, and one

3:56thing you absolutely can't have said. Everything between those is theirs. If you can't tolerate

4:02that, buy an ad. That's what ads are for.

4:06Next one, the skeptic CMO who thinks this is still a fad. What do you tell them?

4:11The average person spends over two hours a day inside these feeds. Watching creators,

4:16not your TV spot. The audience already moved. You're just deciding whether to show up where

4:21they are or keep shouting where they used to be.

4:23Give me the one thing to do Monday morning. Pull your last three creator posts and check

4:28if any had a trackable link or code. If not, that's your Monday. Put one measurable

4:33link on the next post. You can't manage a channel you refuse to measure.

4:38That's your five. The full CMO track, structured no fluff, is at MBA-training.com.